Poor Oral Health is a Crisis That Kentucky Must Address Soon

By Louisville Courier-Journal

In 2004, Kentucky led the nation in the percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 64 who had lost all their natural teeth. In 2001, 47 percent of Kentucky children from age 2 to 4, and 29 percent of Kentucky’s third- and sixth-graders had visible and untreated tooth decay.

That’s an oral health crisis, according to the Kentucky Long- Term Policy Research Center, and we agree.

Unfortunately, Medicaid reimbursements for dental work are so low that only a fourth of Kentucky’s dentists accept such patients.

Poor oral health is implicated in many chronic illnesses.

The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville dental schools, the UK Rural Health Center in Hazard, St. Claire Medical Center in Morehead and the Trover Clinic in Madisonville are responding to the oral health crisis.

The Trover Clinic, for example, has an 18-month-old pilot program for expectant mothers that is having a “phenomenal effect,” Dr. Jeff Ebersole, director of the UK Center for Oral Health Research, told the Courier-Journal’s Deborah Yetter. He noted that the participants are experiencing lower rates of premature and low birth weight infants, even as such rates rise elsewhere in Kentucky.

Beside routine check-ups, the Trover Clinic participants are also having their teeth checked and cleaned, and those who need it are given treatment, including dentures. Many of the participants had no idea how their infected teeth and gums affected their babies.

The Trover Clinic program begs for duplication. It also makes it shameful that some of Kentucky’s elected officials are hesitant to extend health care to more poor Kentuckians — if not to parents, then, at the very least, to the poorest kids, in order to break the awful cycle of dental and chronic illness.

(c) 2007 Cincinnati Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.